Description Roberto Sanchez Herrera 2012-10-19 10:58:15 EDT

Created attachment 222583 [details]
Test projects

I had both  Preferences > Maven  > Java EE Integration > "Generate application.xml under the build directory" and  Preferences > Maven  > Java EE Integration > "Maven Archiver generates files under  the build directory" unchecked. 

I attach a sample workspace consisting on a EAR with a web project. Both have deployment descriptor: the EAR's deployment descriptor has the web module and a security role, and the Web project's deployment descriptor has a context parameter and a list of welcome pages. 

To recreate, I did this: 
1. Uncheck both options under Preferences > Maven  > Java EE Integration 
2. Import the projects in the attached file 
3. Convert the Web project to maven (Configure > Convert to Maven project). Use war for packaging. The deployment descriptor is left untouched (which is fine) 
4. Convert the EAR project to maven, using ear for packaging. The original deployment descriptor is replaced by a new one, which has only the display name. 
So the security roles and the modules are lost. 

This is not a problem with security roles only. Any information in the EAR's deployment descriptor is lost during the conversion. 

In a reply to this in the m2e-wtp-dev mail list, Fred suggested two approaches:

"I think there are 2 non-exclusive approaches to the problem :
- either add some preferences to keep the original application.xml during conversion (meaning adding <generateApplicationXml>false<generateApplicationXml> to the pom.xml)
- the ear conversion participant should at least extract the security roles from the original application.xml and convert them as maven-ear-plugin configuration. However, the modules would still be removed, since the conversion mechanism doesn't currently support dependency conversion"

http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/m2e-wtp-dev/msg00065.html